


there's no place in heaven for someone like me

by smallredboy



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Boners, Boss/Employee Relationship, Catholic Guilt, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Homophobia, House Being House, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Prayer, Religious Discussion, Sexuality Crisis, mostly set pre-canon, not the trauma kind, those are enough tags. i think.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-23 06:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18148499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: During his first year working under House, Chase realizes he's not straight; his Catholic upbringing has a few words to say about the matter.





	there's no place in heaven for someone like me

**Author's Note:**

> for my 100prompts table and my 15kisses table.
> 
> this idea has been in my head for ages now and im glad i managed to cough it out
> 
> title from _no place in heaven_ by mika, aka the gay catholic mood(tm)
> 
> enjoy!

Chase bumps on Petrova while they’re off to do different tests, hip against hip.

House scoffs. “Watch your step, pretty boy,” he says with a teasing note to his voice.

Suddenly, the world stops spinning on its axis, and suddenly all the blood in Chase’s body rushes to in between his legs. His eyes widen and he can feel the tightening in his pants, the way his boxers shift. He draws in a breath, curses, and goes to run a tox screen on the patient, and he can only think of the fact he got hard at House calling him  a _ pretty boy _ .

He’s never had a thing against gay people, no. Maybe at some point, after going to church every weekend, of course he was thrown into such messages. But he had grown out of it, especially after seminary school— he doesn’t care about people being gay or straight, men or women. It just matters that they’re good people.

But the mere idea of him being one of that kind of people makes his insides twist.

This is just an isolated incident, he tells himself as there’s not a trace of anything on their patient’s body. Maybe it’s just a poorly timed spontaneous thing. He has no reason to fret. 

* * *

As much as he wants it to be, it’s not an isolated incident.

Many times after, as House cycles through employees, firing them all but him, he still gets hard at every insult or compliment. House says he’s gorgeous, and he blushes and stutters like he’s a schoolgirl. It’s pathetic— it’s disgusting. Why does he feel this way? He shouldn’t be feeling this way. Not for his boss, not for any man.

He ends up back to his usual route of coping with things. He goes to a bar, he drinks, he takes a girl home. Her body is perfect, all curves, and he gets his mind off his worries, for the most part. When he goes to his computer the day after, he goes straight to watch porn. He finds himself looking at the way the man kisses the woman, all hungry and lusty.

He pictures, for just a split second, being in the woman’s place— House there, kissing him.

He’s filled with disgust, and he closes the tab. He doesn’t like the dirty-wrong feeling in his skin, the scream of sinful and unholy that seems to follow him everywhere he goes.

He’s long learned how to deal with the well-known guilt brought up by his upbringing, his religious upbringing. But it’s still hard to avoid the need to get down on his knees at a confessional and cry out every one of his sins. There’s so many, really— so much ill speaking of others, so much envy, so much lust.

He’s had so much sex without a ring in his finger, and he’s only seldom felt terrible about that. But now he’s stuck here, thinking about House’s lips on him, and it’s like he  _ has  _ to go to church for the first time in years.

He wants to believe, really. But it’s hard when one of the few things God means to him is the crushing guilt, the drowning shame.

* * *

“I’ve indulged in thoughts of sodomy recently,” he tells the priest, his hands pressed together.

The priest doesn’t give him a cure, an antidote. He tells him to recite a Hail Mary a few times and that’s it. There’s no definitive answer, no plan, no quick fix to what’s going on with him. What’s made him feel so unholy and rotten all of a sudden.

He still recites the Hail Mary, though. As many times as he requests. He says the Lord’s Prayer. Crosses himself.

“You might want to attend a psychiatrist for that, my child,” the Father tells him.

When he goes home after mass, he ignores the Father’s suggestion. He wants to change himself, but he’s not going to see a professional about it. House could find out and oh, if House found out— that’d be terrible. He can hear House mocking him, calling him gay for everyone to hear, for everyone to see. Asking smugly if he had been the one to make him realize.

It’d be terrible because he’d be right about that. If it wasn’t for House, he would’ve never known.

* * *

The teams change across the two years he is with House. Women and men of various nationalities, different accents— once there’s a German man and a French woman working along with him, and House fakes a damn convincing British accent just to belong in the non-American club.

The only constant is always him; he’s the only one who stays for longer than a few months. He hits the year mark, and the second year comes rolling around, and the team keeps changing. He feels special— he feels like he’s getting preferential treatment. A part of him wants to believe that House likes him, enjoys his company, something, somehow, but he knows that’s not it.

“Are you keeping me around because you don’t wanna see Rowan Chase when he’s mad?” he asks one day after House fires the latest attempt at a new employee.

House laughs dryly, shakes his head. “You are a pretty decent doctor, Chase.”   
  
“Well, I— thank you…”   
  
“Don’t take it to heart,” House interrupts, tilting his head and looking at him. His ice blue eyes pierce into him, and he’s vulnerable. House can read him like an open book. “I’m sure I’ll have to insult your intelligence again in no time, pretty boy.”   


He doesn’t take it to heart, no— he takes it to his hand in between his legs as soon as he’s home.

* * *

“Your grades weren’t impressive in med school,” House told him during his interview, looking at his file with boredom. Chase knew he was solely considering him because his bastard of a father had made a call, so he was lucky to be there.

“They weren’t,” Chase nodded.

“So did you sleep with a professor of yours? Tell me your key to success, Dr. Chase.”   


Chase blushed and stuttered back then, obviously thinking about his few female professors.

Now he looks back and thinks about those words and he can’t help but wonder if House meant one of his male professors. They’re more abundant, anyway— they’re more abundant and more well-known. Of course, that could’ve been a gay joke on House’s part. A part of him is aware House must not be completely straight (the way he interacted with Wilson was telling enough, but…)

He wonders if it was House asking him if he’s gay, or into men— at least quietly, at least indirectly.

“No!” he had exclaimed, blushing hard. His male professors only briefly crossed his mind.

* * *

House catches him praying after he had made a joke about how the patient must’ve started drooling because of Chase being there. It made all his simmering thoughts about gayness and sodomy and bisexuality come pouring back out, making him sick to his stomach. He can’t exactly go to the confessional while he’s at work, so he settles for the next best thing— praying.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation—”   


House bangs his cane into the wall of the morgue, and he jumps, straightening up and looking at House with wide eyes.

“What’re you praying at work for?” House says, “No one’s died, no one’s suffering.”   
  
Chase shakes his head, avoids House’s questioning gaze. Those haunting blue eyes of his were too damn pretty, they drew him in as much as he tried not to.

“Oh, are you dealing with your good friend the Catholic guilt? I lived through that, pretty boy, I know exactly what it’s like.”   
  
“You were never religious,” he scoffs, rolling his eyes, but doesn’t outright deny it.

“Oh, but my family was, gorgeous.” He steps closer to him. “Is the guilt because you’re a slut, or because you’re a  _ bisexual  _ slut?”   


Chase’s eyes widen and his breath is knocked out of him, his heart beating a hundred miles per hour. He can’t breathe and all he can sense is the panic rising further up his throat.

House’s teasing, mocking demeanor falls a little, which must be some kind of accomplishment. “I’m a bisexual slut too, Chase,” he says.   


“I don’t…”   
  
His brows furrow. “You don’t know?”   


_ I do _ , he wants to scream,  _ I do and it scares the shit out of me. _

Before he can talk himself out of it, House pulls him closer, kisses him. It’s too slow to be House, to be how House wants it to be— he can feel House’s beard scrape up against his chin, House’s hand on his jaw, all too gentle. He kisses back, languid and soft and he likes it. He likes it too much.

Chase pulls away to catch his breath, and panic fills his gaze.

Before he runs off, House tells him with a sad smile, “You know my number.”

* * *

He’s going to Hell.

He means it completely sincerely, without a hint of sarcasm or irony— he is going to Hell. He’s going to burn for eternity because of who he is. Or who he doesn’t want to be. They’re both the same thing, the same label that tastes rotten in his mouth.

_ An abomination, _  the pages of his well-used Bible from his teenage years tell him.  _ For it is an abomination. _

Before he can control his impulse, he forcibly rips the page off from the rest of the book, starts tearing it up into tiny little pieces. He wants to throw it at someone, he wants to push it into a fire, but he resorts to having the page that has kept him up at night into pieces.

He does the same with the other page with the same message— man must not lie with man.

He’s ignored his desires too long, kept them simmering down under too long.

* * *

Once, Chase was attending mass with his father.

The preacher got angry, the preacher started going on about how gay people shouldn’t exist. He kept going on about those two lines in the Old Testament, both in Leviticus. Gay people had gotten their disease because it was God’s punishment against those men.

Rowan had wrapped his hand around his son. He was fourteen; it was one year before he left. Rowan squeezed his hand.

“Remember what he is saying, Robert,” he had said, his voice too quiet amongst the preacher’s loud rambling.

Chase looked up at him. Chase nodded, not knowing how those words would haunt him. Not knowing that the things he felt for his classmates weren’t something all teenage boys felt.

* * *

“You’re not going to Hell,” House tells him as if he’s explaining left and right to a small kid. “And even if you do, then Hell’s gonna be full of gay people. We’re all going to have a great time.”

  
“A great time being tortured for eternity, I assume,” Chase says dryly.

House pulls him into another kiss. “There are many things in the Old Testament you all don’t follow any more. Every article of clothing nowadays has more than one kind of textile. If disobeying that means Hell then, Heaven is empty and everyone’s down there.”   
  
“That doesn’t help the fact I’m gonna be tortured for eternity. Perhaps along the rest of the world population.”   
  
House sighs. “I’m not the best at this, Chase.”   
  
“You’re not Christian; you’re not Catholic. You don’t get it.”   
  
“I went to mass every week for eighteen years,” he points out. “But if you want a fellow bisexual Christian’s point of view, Foreman’s right there.”   


Foreman is right there. Chase sucks in a breath and leans into House’s touch.

He needs to remind himself that his existence isn’t sinful. He needs to remind himself that he’s not going to burn for eternity just for being who he is.

* * *

“What’s going on with Chase and House?” Cameron asks Foreman one day, while Chase is eavesdropping.

Foreman maintains his neutral face, neutral words as if Chase wasn’t rambling to him about the situation mere hours ago. He shrugs. “I don’t really know.”   
  
“You know everything, Foreman. Tell me the news.”   
  
Foreman won’t out him. Chase hopes he won’t out him— the mere thought of people other than House and Foreman knowing makes him nauseous and panicky. 

“I don’t know, Cameron,” he insists.

He can’t help but draw a sigh of relief and get out of their earshot, rubbing his temples a little. Knowing he’s bisexual and dealing with his colleagues can be exhausting sometimes, but at least Foreman gets it. And at least he’s slowly growing more comfortable with House’s touch.

* * *

Chase learns to cope with his overwhelming guilt, little by little. He reads articles about the Bible’s true meaning in those lines; he reads articles about the true meaning in what Jesus gives them, and if he has to feel ashamed or not. He reads gay Catholics talk about their experiences in the church. He reads gay ex-Catholics’ experiences, too.

He believes in God— He is one of the few things he can trust in this world. He is never going away, as much as he doesn’t want to believe in him. As much as sometimes he wants to believe nothing comes after death— no judgment, nothing that will hold him accountable after he passes.

But he remembers God loves His children— he tries to.

After he has sex with House for the first time, the first thing he feels is relief. Not shame, not guilt— they come after a few minutes, but the first thing he feels is like he’s finally allowed to breathe after twenty-seven years of existence.

“First time with a man, right?”   
  
Chase allows himself to smile and to kiss House’s nose. “Yeah.”

“How hard is the Catholic guilt attacking you right now?”   
  
He draws in a breath. “Not as much as I expected it to.”   


House kisses him. “I’m glad.”   
  
He smiles a little; as much as he can. “I’m glad, too.”


End file.
